Out of touch for years, Randy
\nnever made a class reunion
\ncouldn\u2019t be located;
\nonly child, his mother dead
\nfather presumed so years before<\/p>\n
Randy never married, had no kids<\/p>\n
A few of us tried;
\nmail, Christmas cards returned,
\nundeliverable, no forwarding<\/p>\n
one day a chance encounter
\none old friend, another
\nRandy, a mutual acquaintance
\nhis passing a few years previous
\nnoted casually by one, to the
\nsurprise of the other<\/p>\n
he passed the word along<\/p>\n
mourning took place
\nbeyond posthumously, without
\nfanfare; a note on a reunion website,
\ninformation gathered from the
\nnational death registry:<\/p>\n
name, date of birth, date of death.<\/p>\n
Ultimate finality<\/p>\n
recently, going through
\nold correspondence from nondescript
\ncardboard box from my attic
\na letter from Randy, dated two-years
\npast high school graduation
\nhe spoke of his loneliness,
\nfeeling invisible
\nusing the word \u2018lost\u2019 as
\nboth noun and verb<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember the letter,<\/p>\n
but I remembered
\nlong distance phone calls when
\nthose were still a big deal
\nI remember his deep sighs,
\naudible even over old desk phone
\nhis resignation at lack of progress
\ntoward anything, anyone<\/p>\n
reading, rereading his letter
\nfrom forty years ago
\nit became very clear to me that
\nRandy was lost long before we
\nwere aware we had misplaced him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
– Mark L. Lucker<\/em>
\n\u00a9 2016<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Out of touch for years, Randy never made a class reunion couldn\u2019t be located; only child, his mother dead father presumed so years before Randy never married, had no kids A few of us tried; mail, Christmas cards returned, undeliverable, no forwarding one day a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,441,1],"tags":[859,1899,870],"class_list":["post-25352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-poetry-prompt-responses","category-uncategorized","tag-hour-13-prompt","tag-lost-person","tag-prompt-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25394,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25352\/revisions\/25394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}